ALL police officer gross misconduct hearings would be held in public under new conduct regulations being proposed by the Government.<\/p>\n
Other planned changes \u2013 which could come in as early as the end of this year \u2013 include removing lawyers from the conduct process and discipline proceedings to continue even if an officer resigns.<\/p>\n
Steve Evans, conduct lead for the Police Federation, said: \u201cThis is being rushed through without a great deal of thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Police Federation of England and Wales annual conference heard this week that police conduct changes are being swiftly driven through by the Government over \u201cintegrity\u201d concerns.<\/p>\n
As well as public hearings \u2013 which would be chaired by Superintending ranks –\u00a0there are also new Government plans for all forces to have a public register of all officers involved in conduct hearings.<\/p>\n
Mr Evans said: \u201cPublic floggings stopped 200 years ago. The overwhelming majority of police officers are decent, fair and honest \u2013 above all \u2013 people. So integrity for us is not an issue. A few cops do bad things some times. And they have to be rooted out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we have brought regulations in the past, we have considered all the implications, where might this take us, what are the problems. This is being rushed through without a great deal of thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have quite serious concerns because it appears the Home Office are streamlining the discipline process in such a way that it is just so much easier to dismiss officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Evans (pictured) told the conference that consultation with the Police Federation is currently underway and that the new Regulations \u2013 if they are pushed through \u2013 could become law by the end of this year, or the beginning of 2014.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThere is an integrity agenda. What I would say is what is the problem you are trying to fix? If a cop is bad, they will get dismissed and we have no problem with that in the Federation \u2013 as long as they are treated fairly in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Evans added: \u201cThe Federation regards looking after officers in conduct as one of its primary functions. We will look after officers, we will make sure the training that the reps get improves. It is already very good, it will get even higher.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will make sure they get access to legal advice and we will make sure they get the best defence possible. We have always done that and will continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ALL police officer gross misconduct hearings would be held in public under new conduct regulations being proposed by the Government. Other planned changes \u2013 which could come in as early\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}